


Phone Home

by JennyBoBenny



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-03 20:49:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14004480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennyBoBenny/pseuds/JennyBoBenny
Summary: Ben's a seventeen-year-old boy who hates himself. Gary's an alien who wants to get back home. They have more in common than expected.





	Phone Home

“You think they sell shoes here?”  
I look up from my phone. Charlotte’s looking at me with one of those expressions that sort of spirals inward, like clothing in a washer.  
Yawning, “Why?”  
“Does it matter why? I’m asking you a question.”  
There are three whole shelves just full of Pop Tarts. If you stare at them long enough, each blends into the other, one after the other, cinnamon, cherry, birthday cake, s'mores. Sometimes, when I’m at Charlotte’s, I could eat a whole box on my own. Cinnamon, cherry, birthday cake, s’mores, some sort of new flavor, like a game we’re playing. Like cards or something, and we’re just sitting on the couch or at the table mindlessly, sweating, sitting there.  
“If you want it, buy it, for Pete’s sake.” I turn around. Charlotte’s leaning on our carriage, back hunched. She’s looking through her purse, sat in that seat meant for babies. Her elbows sort of rub over the handlebar of the cart. I wonder if they’ll bruise. I imagine that hurts. I’m always doing that, feeling like if I were to do such a simple thing as that, it’d hurt. I don’t know why I do that. Behind her, a whole shelf is yellow and orange, and framed like that, with her looking through her purse, hair loose in a bun, sweater hung over her shoulders, if you were to frame it just right, she’d almost look like part of a painting. Some sort of Norman Rockwell magazine cover on Americans, or something. I think Charlotte’s the exact type of person you could find there. Just pretty enough to fit in, just tired and burnt enough to make her some sad-looking subject. I’d never fit in a painting. I’ve got one of those unrecognizable faces, shlump clothes, one of the boring ones.  
“Ben, if you don’t fucking answer me, I’m gonna explode.” She’s still looking through her purse, except now her hands are sort of flailing, like a bird squirming from a power line.  
It takes me a while to say something. I imagine my face is pushed back into the fat of my neck, some sort of confused jumble. “What?”  
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Ben--” She breathes in a long string of air, turning, eyes going wide, hands halfway raised, “I need you to listen to me, okay? I’m under a lot of stress right now, and I need you to listen to me.”  
“Alright, god, sorry.”  
“Did you take my phone?”  
“No-- oh, wait, shit--”  
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”  
She holds out her hand, does one of those hip things she does, half folds her lips in, tries to raise an eyebrow. Sometimes Charlotte steals expressions out of TV shows, big expressive ones. I dig her phone out of my pocket and hand it over.  
She leans back over the cart and starts walking with it, all slow, dialing up something.  
“Richie?” She says, “Hey.”  
I try to imagine myself on the other end of the line, with Richie at work. I imagine hearing Charlotte, but not seeing her. If I were on that line, I wouldn’t pinpoint her at the grocery store, and I wouldn’t have suspected she’d done one of her weird, “I’m stressed and angry” things again, and I would’ve forgotten about her shrill voice and hands and itchy sweaters, and I just would’ve heard how calm she sounded. Like one of those dreams you can only vaguely remember.  
I walk slowly behind her, brushing the back of my hand over cereal boxes. Red, yellow, green, green, blue, yellow, scratch, bump, scratch.  
“Yeah? Uh-huh. No, I agree. No, she’s really something. No, I totally agree. Did you hear her last week? I didn’t tell you that story? So she told me-- yeah, yeah, I told you. Yeah. Yeah. Ha! Yeah. Yeah, I mean what are ya gonna do? I mean, really. Yeah. Ok, well, I’ll let you go-- oh, Richie, I noticed your shoes were wearing down. You need a new pair? Oh, no, don’t worry about it. Mhm. Mhm. Ha, ha. Yeah. I mean, early birthday and all that. Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah. Okay, okay, bye now. See you in a bit.”  
I look at Charlotte through the corner of my eye. She looks cramped there, bent crooked, back hunched, eyes still fixed on her phone. She breathes in, like she’s gonna say something, but then she just sort of lets it sit there in her lungs. That’s how she always is, high-strung. Stuffed to the brim. As we get in line, I pull her phone from her hands and lean against our carriage.  
I read her texts, and when she catches me, she doesn’t say anything. She only has five conversations. I don’t know if it’s because she’s constantly cleaning out her phone, or because she literally just has no one to talk to. Me; my dad; Richie; CVS, telling her her prescription has been filled; and her coworker, who wanted to know if she could cover his shift.  
“Do you want gum?”  
I look up at her. She’s taking the stuff out of our cart and putting it on the counter. I pick up a box of ramen noodles. “Yeah”.  
I look at the cashier. He’s older, with those wide age spots along his forehead and nose. He makes some sort of friendly comment about our groceries. Charlotte laughs airily under her breath. I stare right over his shoulder, into the reflections of him. Six isles of people in matching outfits, doing the same job, all smiling and nodding and looking like they’re really not all there.  
One of those people, bagging groceries, sleeves rolled up, hair hanging over her face like tree leaves, is Rachel.  
“Shit.” I look around me, like there’ll be some sort of escape route. “Shit, fuck, shit, Charlotte--” She looks at me, her expression skewed. “Give me your keys,” I say. Her eyebrows close in, movie moment shock, and I start fiddling through her purse. I wonder if the cashier is looking through his wiry bifocals. I wonder if she’s looking, looking at me scrambling, wondering why I’m scrambling, I’m scrambling. I can’t find the keys, I don’t care, I tell Charlotte I’ll be outside, I go towards the exit, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step. Inside is warm. The walls are beige-yellow, the tile is pale brown. Step, step, step, step, step, I am outside. It is May, but it is cold, and I am surrounded by washes of blue and green and grey parking lot. I huff. I am hot, it is cold. I am cold, it is hot. I stuff my hands in my pockets, I walk to Charlotte’s truck, cold blue and beaten, and I wait behind it for her. “Fuck.”  
It doesn’t feel like enough. I kick the parking lot so the rubber toe of my shoe squeals. “Fuck.”  
Charlotte comes outside a short time after me, carrying two bags of groceries. “What the hell was that?!”  
I put my head in my hands for a second, “please tell me you didn’t talk to her.”  
“Talk to-- oh, Rachel. Yeah, Benji, of course I talked to her,” she says, handing me the bags. She unlocks the truck.  
I only start listening to her talk when we’ve left the parking lot.  
“So she was telling me about her ex-boyfriend, and oh my god, Ben-- oh my god, I could not believe the kind of shit boys your age get up to--” she pauses and slaps my arm, “anyways, so they had a whole falling out,” she turns the corner, leaning with the road, “but, y’know, she really liked him. I don’t know what she was thinking about the whole thing, I mean, I could never like somebody like that. Oh, did I tell you what it was he did?” She looks at me, then back at the road, then back at me.  
Rachel looks different now, only I guess I didn’t fully realize it. It’s different seeing someone in school than it is outside. It’s like this is the first time I’ve seen her since freshman year. But it’s not. I saw her changing, every day I saw her changing. And I didn’t think anything of it til now. I wonder if she’s seen me changing and thought anything of it. If I’m someone she hasn’t thought much about.  
Charlotte sighs deep and hard, “fine. Fine, if you’re not gonna talk to me, I’m not telling you what she said about you.”  
“You were talking about me?”  
“You think she didn’t see you run out of the store? Trying to take attention away from yourself just makes it worse Ben--”  
“Fuck you.”  
Her face goes red and she shakes her head, pressing her lips together in that certain way, one that resembles tucking sheets under a mattress. “I’m done. I drive you everywhere, I buy you food, I take you out when you’re in a mood even though I’m tired. I don’t get listened to, then I give you one piece of advice and this is what I fucking get. You swearing at me. I’m not your friend Ben. I’m your--”  
“My what? You’re my what?”  
She looks dead at the road. Then she starts crying.  
Sometimes I see fights coming. Sort of feel it. I didn’t feel it. Sometimes they just come out of nowhere. Out of everyday sort of things.  
I shove myself into the corner of the truck, rest my head on the window. “I just swore at you, you swear at me all the time.”  
I see her face in the reflection of my window. It peels like an orange. Her lips fold and crease. Her eyes get wide and her nose scrunches, in this busy and impossible way. “Yeah, well. I’m the adult here, so.”  
“I’m an adult.”  
She scoffs, “Oh, no, no, no. You’re not even technically an adult.”  
“I almost am.”  
“Almost isn’t the same thing. That’s like if you started saying, ‘I’m engaged’ the second you moved in with someone.”  
“Is this, like, a transition into one of your college stories?”  
She punches my shoulder, “no.”  
I put in a CD and Charlotte turns the volume down to a low rumble.  
“Are we picking up Richie?” I ask.  
“Yeah, and you would’ve known that if you listened to anything I’ve ever said.”  
“Isn’t there anyone else who can pick him up?”  
She clears her throat. “Ben, we don’t choose our family in this world. It just happens. You don’t abandon your family when they’re in trouble.”  
“You do if there are other people who can pick him up. And you do if it’s his fault.”  
“It’s not his fault.”  
“How is a DUI not his fault?”  
“He had a difficult childhood, Ben. You’ll understand when you get older-- not everyone gets a bright future all mapped out for them. You gotta face some struggles.”  
“Oh, yeah, yeah. So what, I’m gonna become an alcoholic? And that’ll be God’s fault, not mine?”  
“Not God’s fault. God doesn’t make mistakes. Everything influences something. You’re gonna do just fine.”  
“So whose fault is it then? When I become an alcoholic?”  
“Shut up. It’s not funny anymore.”  
“I didn’t say it was funny, I asked whose fault it would be.”  
“Nobody’s. Stuff happens. But if you drink so much as a sip of beer, I’ll shoot you myself.”

—

Richie folds down another sweaty card.  
His face is dewey, the bridge of his nose shiny with sweat, his jaw cut with growing-in hair. I go next. I have an eight and I win. He sighs and reshuffles the cards, so they fold and scratch together.  
Charlotte’s washing the dishes behind us. The sink pools all this sound together, so we’re floating in it. The room becomes a blue haze, but Richie’s hands and knuckles are callused and tough, white and red like the cards. When he deals them out his throat is gravely and he fixes his baseball cap.  
“Are you two almost done?” Charlotte asks.  
“Yeah. Yeah, almost. One more game” Richie says.  
The sun looks dull painted over the kitchen table, boxed into four by the window, slanted and pale. When I pick up my cards my hand gets stuck there. It is doughy and speckled like bread.  
“What do you two want for breakfast?” Charlotte asks. She’s turning off the sink now, wiping her hands on her pajama bottoms.  
I tell her I can make something. Richie asks for a Pop Tart and she puts four in the toaster.  
She sits down with us, asks to play. So Richie takes my cards and reshuffles.  
When the toaster pops she gives Richie and herself one each, and me two.  
“Why’d you give me more than you?”  
“I don’t know,” she shrugs. She splits hers in half and eats from the middle. I look at the jelly when it gets stuck to her fingers and how it grapples to them like sap.  
“Well I don’t want two,” I say. I hold my cards tight between my fingers.  
“Alright,” she says. She looks at me weirdly, with a side-eye. “Give one to Richie, then”. I do. He’s not listening. He has his phone and cards in one hand, his pop tart in the other, and his eyes on the screen.  
Charlotte breathes through her food. “You going to school today, buddy?” Her eyes aren’t on me. They’re casted out the window. I follow them but there’s nothing there. Just her small lawn, the town down the hill, the sky in a cloudy haziness.  
“I don’t think so.” She doesn’t respond. I finish my Pop Tart and put my plate in the sink. “I think I’m gonna head home,” I tell her.  
“Yeah. Alright.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This is a novel I'm currently working on, so this isn't the whole thing. I just felt like posting something :^) I might put more up here in the future


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